Development, Wellbeing and Perceptions of the ‘Expert’ in Ladakh, North-West India

Abstract

In Ladakh, north-west India, a popular narrative of the region’s inhabitants as spiritually and ecologically enlightened combines with national sustainable and participatory development policies to produce a distinctive character that underpins the local administration’s development strategies. These strategies emphasise ‘traditional’ values of cooperation, simplicity, ecological harmony, and spiritual harmony as the way to achieve culturally sustainable development and emotional wellbeing. However, obstacles to development appear when normative principles of sustainability and ecological wisdom encounter cosmology, hierarchy, and perceptions of expertise in society. In this article I reflect upon my fieldwork and previous regional ethnographies to consider possible frameworks for evaluating wellbeing as an indicator of culturally sustainable development that include concepts of cosmology and expert protection.